LONDON, ENGLAND.- Christie’s announced that the recently identified circular oil on panel painting by Pieter Bruegel I (c. 1525/30-1569), The Drunkard pushed into the Pigsty, will be sold in London on 10 July 2002.  Art historical and scientific analysis has revealed after nearly four centuries that it is an exceptionally rare work, originally signed and dated 1577, by the artist, one of the single greatest figures in western art.  The work is one of only two fully accepted works by the master still in private hands.

This newly discovered work by Pieter Bruegel I was first tentatively attributed in 1975, however in early 2000 Roger van Schoute and Hélène Verougstraete discovered a signature and date which enabled scholars to add this roundel with confidence to Bruegel’s recognised oeuvre.  They discovered that to the left of the twisted vegetable peeling at the top of the trough are traces of the artist’s name and to the right of the peeling the full date ‘m.d.l.vii’ can be made out running to the right side of the trough. The letters ‘m.d.’ were first noticed while the panel was being examined by infra-red reflectography with the aim of detecting underdrawing. Following this discovery, the rest of the inscription was read using a stereomicroscope.                                 

Unusually for Northern painting at the time, Bruegel painted the picture on a walnut panel.  Grooves are visible on the surface in raking light and indicate the panel was turned on a wheel, which explains the choice of wood, as in some cities guild regulations prevented the turners from working in oak.  This painting is unrecorded until a late 19th century inventory, but its composition has always been known through engravings by or after Jan Wierix (1549-1618), as well as through painted versions by Pieter Brueghel II and his circle.                                                                       

The painting is probably one of an otherwise lost series by the artist whose underlying subject matter is moralising themes.  Here, the principal figure is a drunkard being treated like a farm animal, although there is no clear reference to alcohol in the picture.  In the same year he painted this work, Bruegel also completed the series of the Capital Sins, which were engraved the following year by Van der Heyden and published by Hieronymus Cock. In those, the figure of Gluttony (Gula), is depicted as a woman drinking greedily from a jug, the concept of gluttony in the 16th century implying excessive drinking as much as eating.  In addition, she is shown sitting on a pig eating turnips, of great similarity to that in the present work; pigs and turnips (root crops were regarded as aphrodisiacs) were understood to refer to Lust, with which alcohol was also connected.  One aspect of the picture’s iconography that remains mysterious is the length of rope tied to the Drunkard’s leg.



The painting is being sold on behalf of a European collector, the descendant of Cécile van der Renne de Daelenbroeck (1878-1949) who had inherited the work through her family.